I stood there facing west and watched the red sun set across the ancient wheat fields. And as darkness fell and the night closed in I began to feel alone again. Alone and afraid. Then, slowly, quietly, a voice spoke from within the darkness itself. It was steady and strong without being loud.

“Come back in Yahome, the day is done and so is our work here.” I turned to see grandfather, framed like an ancient campfire story man in the light of the small candle he carried, beckoning me toward home.

Before even the moon had bared its sad visage I was comfortable, lying in my bed waiting for my dreams to bring me to places I had never seen or known. The loudest sound in this quiet, settled darkness was the muffled clucks of the hens in the barn as they too settled in for the night.

As my face rested on my pillow my mind began to drift and connect my pillow to the soft downy coats of the hen’s young chicks as they nestled among their parents. Then I was gone, flying away to lands unknown but for my grandfather’s tales.

I flew east to a camp where men slept, in green and brown tents that seemed to blend into the land, and sat huddled around campfires speaking in lowered tones lest they wake the others asleep. I flew west to a fox’s den where lay three-quarter dozen of their small orange bodies. Some were smaller than others of course, but those that were bigger slept on the outside to keep the young warm, safe, quiet and asleep. In the middle of the night the mother fox slipped out of the den and headed east.

When I woke up the chickens were dead, no one saw it. I only saw mother sweeping up the last pieces of straw that had been their home. Father said a fox got them, that like a shadow in the night it had slipped in and murdered them all. He was shouting then and I began to feel afraid for the fox. If it was anything like in my dream if the fox died so would all the others. That would happen if father found that small fox. He had calmed down then, so I wasn’t as afraid anymore.

As the sun set once again across the wheat fields, grandfather and I sat on our willow seats watching the times change.

“Grandfather, was what the fox did wrong?”

“No Yahome, you will find that wrong can mean very different things depending on who says it. Take the chickens. Was it wrong to leave them without protection? Was the fox wrong to kill them? Will your father be wrong to kill the fox if he finds it? These questions are not as simple as they seem. Now alas, the sun is gone, be off to bed until it once again shows its face.”

I crept up on muffled feet and sunk into my bed once again and in the silence of the night as the stars began to shine I began to fly away again.

I flew north to a place where the ground had been changed to a pockmarked desert where only the fire survived. It roared and roared, louder and louder until the sound blinded my ears and terrified my soul, so I ran from that horrible place. I flew south to a black piece of land where a young man painted the most beautiful of scenes onto the wings of his aeroplane. No one knew he was there, no one cared, if he was quiet about it he could spend all his nights painting beautiful scenes onto his wings and no one would notice.

When I woke up the old wheat field been replaced by a noisy sea of tents. Everything was green and brown from the men, to the tents, to the ugly iron machines.

Downstairs I heard my father shouting with a man who seemed to think he owned the world. Suddenly there was a loud bang and the voices stopped. I heard the front door open and close. I lay back in bed and thought of the pictures the young pilot had painted on his plane, after a minute my grandfather came in.

“Why are those men here grandfather?” I asked.

“They will do whatever they want with no need for any real reason behind it. We just need to leave them alone and ignore them, they will go away, I’ve seen it before and no doubt you will see it again in your life.”

Slowly and faintly a throbbing sound began to drone through the sky. It lulled the mind to a more peaceful place and caused everyone to look the skies. Three aeroplanes were quietly sweeping in.

The leading plane had painted wings.

They each dropped a small package to the soldiers waiting below. When the packages hit the ground, there was a bright light, as our windows shattered. The shards reflected the colours, white, yellow and orange combined to emit a golden radiance and then there was silence.

My last image is this, golden silence.